A Summary of Underlying Theory and Research Base for Understanding Instruction by Design
By: Jay McTighe & Elliot Seif
Presentation by: Lindsay Schmitt, Jillian Fick, Joanna Luce, and Casey Lange

What is Understanding by Design (UBD)?

Table of Contents

What is Understanding by Design (UBD)?toc

Backwards Planning Curriculum Design Process

3 Important Stages of UBD

Core Principles of UBD:

Research base for UBD

Research base in Cognitive psychology focuses on 5 areas:

Research on Achievement Related to Understanding by Design

Research on Technology

Research on Instructional Practices

Research on Higher Education

Future Research Targeted

Understanding by Design in Action

Reference:

• A tool in education planning with a focus on “teaching for understanding”
• A research-based, standards driven framework for improving student achievement focused on instructional design, assessment, and professional development.
• Developed by Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe for the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Backwards Planning Curriculum Design Process

• 3 Important Stages of UBD

  • Teachers are designers of learning, of environments and of student experience. The authors of UBD argue that teachers should think like “assessors” and design instruction backwards.

Core Principles of UBD:

1. Develop and deepen student understanding
2. Student ability to apply knowledge and skills within authentic contexts
3. Effective curriculum development through backward design
4. Consistent reviews of curriculum and assessment effectiveness- “quality control”
5. Teachers provide students opportunities to reveal conceptual understanding- “explain, interpret, apply, shift, perspective, empathize, and self-assess.”
6. Collaboration with teachers, schools, and districts using technology, and other approaches to design, share, and critique units of study.

UBDExchange.org

• This site provides searchable database of curriculum designs, electronic design tools and templates, and online peer and expert review protocols. These materials provide educators with a powerful set of resources to make their work more focused, engaging, coherent, and effective. (__http://www.ubdexchange.org/__)

Research base for UBD

• ·Focuses on 2 major questions:
  • What is the research base underlying Understanding by Design?
  • How do we know that Understanding by Design, when appropriately applied, will enhance student achievement?

Research base in Cognitive psychology focuses on 5 areas:

1. Memory and the structure of knowledge
2. Analysis of problem solving and reasoning
3. Early foundations
4. Meta-cognitive processes and self regulatory capabilities
5. Cultural experience and community participation

How cognitive psychology is used in UBD:

1. Focus of teaching shifted from drill to student understanding and application
2. High contextual transfer rates happen with student understanding material in depth
3. Novice versus expert:
   1. Experts seek to develop understanding of problems: thinking revolves around big ideas
   2. Novices approach problems looking for quick correct answer
4. Cover material in-depth versus superficially. Students retain information that is extensively covered with meaningful connection 5. Feedback is fundamental to learning and formative assessments should be used for this 6. Assessments should provide students with opportunities to apply their knowledge rather than just recite it 7. Expert teachers should know the structure of their discipline and use their knowledge as “cognitive roadmaps” to guide assignments, assessment and questions

Research on Achievement Related to Understanding by Design

Study on Authentic Pedagogy:

• 1996 Newmann study that compared authentic pedagogical experiences to academic performance in elementary, middle, and high schools.
  • In this study, authentic pedagogy was measured by a set of standards that included high-order thinking skills, conceptual knowledge and real world connections beyond the classroom.
  • Similar classrooms were compared in regards to student performance:
    • One classroom utilized high levels of authentic pedagogical practices
    • The other classroom utilized low levels of authentic pedagogical practice
  • Results: Students with high levels of authentic pedagogy and performance were helped substantially whether they were high or low achieving students
  • This study concludes that authentic pedagogy and assessments pay off in terms of improving academic achievement for all students, including low performing students.

How this research relates to UBD:

• This research supports the Understanding by Design approach, which emphasizes the use of authentic performance assessments and pedagogy that promotes a focus on deep knowledge and understanding, and active and reflective teaching and learning.

Smith, Lee, and Newmann (2001):

• Study focused on the link between different forms of instruction (interactive vs. traditional) and learning in Chicago elementary schools.
  • Interactive instruction:
    • The teacher’s role is primarily one of guide or coach
    • Students ask questions, develop strategies for solving problems, and communicate with one another
    • Students are often expected to explain their answers and discuss how they arrived at their conclusions
    • Students are encouraged to choose the questions or topics they wish to study within an instructional unit designed by the teacher
    • Teachers usually assess students’ mastery of knowledge through discussions, projects, or tests that demand explanation and extended writing
    • Students discuss ideas and answers by talking, and sometimes arguing, with each other and with the teacher
    • Students work on applications or interpretations of the material to develop new or deeper understandings of a given topic
  • Results:
    • Interactive teaching methods were associated with more learning
    • Confirm that the instructional approach a teacher uses influences how much students learn in reading and mathematics

Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka (2001)

• Study examined the relationship between classroom assignments, quality of student work (is it authentic intellectual work?), and standardized test performance
  • Authentic intellectual work:
    • Involves construction of knowledge, through disciplined inquiry, to produce discourse, products, or performances that have value beyond school
  • Results:
    • Students who received assignments requiring more challenging intellectual work also achieved greater than average gains on the standardized tests in reading and mathematics
    • All students benefit from exposure to high-quality assignments and instruction, even students in very disadvantaged classrooms

Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 1995)

• An exhaustive analysis of classroom teaching in mathematics and science in 42 countries including the U.S., Japan, and Germany using videotapes, surveys, and test data
• Results:
  • American students are outperformed by students in most other industrialized countries
  • Nations with higher test scores use teaching and learning strategies that promote understanding rather than “coverage” and rote learning.
  • One nation, Japan, also uses a collaborative design and review process that continually improves teacher performance

High Schools That Work (HSTW) Program

• HSTW is a nationally recognized program for integrating academic and vocational education. The National Center for Research in Vocational Education conducted a study to analyze the effectiveness of the program
• Four practices of the HSTW program

1. A challenging curriculum that equips students to think analytically, to reason, to judge, and use academic and technical content and processes to complete tasks typical of those found in the workplace and community
2. Teaching for understanding in ways that create challenging situations in which students test their knowledge by solving problems, building products, and giving performances or writing reports that synthesize thorough analysis of a topic, a concept, or an idea
3. Teaching in a meaningful context provides a way to apply academic learning to important ‘real-world’ problems and helps students see meaning and purpose in their studies
4. Assessments of learning are based on clearly stated standards that require students to demonstrate their understanding of new knowledge and skills

• Results:
  • High school programs that embody the above characteristics are extremely effective
  • HSTW significantly increased the percentages of students in their senior classes who met achievement goals in mathematics, science, and reading

Senk and Thompson (2003)

• Study summarized the results 13 studies of “understanding-based” mathematics curricula that follow the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) approach.
  • NCTM
    • Issued a set of standards for mathematics that reduced the emphasis on rote learning of mathematical formulas and procedures and increased emphasis on conceptual understanding of mathematics
  • Results:
    • Students achieved well on traditional assessments and significantly outperformed students who do not use this type of curriculum in areas such as application to new and novel situations, problem-solving skills, and basic understanding of core concepts and principles
    • Studies provide evidence that the NCTM curriculum can have a positive impact on high school mathematics achievement
  • It is not that students in these curricula learn traditional content better but that they develop other skills and understandings while not falling behind on traditional content

How these studies relate to the pedagogy in the UbD planning model:

• UbD instructional approaches
  • Call for the student to construct meaning through disciplined inquiry
  • Emphasis on authentic intellectual work
  • Challenging students with activities that require higher order thinking skills
  • Teach for understanding
  • Teachers set clear performance standards and use forms of authentic assessment
  • Peer review process- parallels the process of collaborative unit and lesson design, refinement, and regional sharing found in other countries

Research on Technology

• Wenglinsky (1998) performed a study to find the relationship between uses of technology and mathematics achievement.
  • The study found that there is a significant achievement relationship in the eighth grade between National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the use of technology that focused on mathematical projects, problems and simulations that promoted application of knowledge and higher order thinking.
  • Conversely, the study found that computer use for drill and practice, negatively related to student achievement.
  • This research supports the UbD approach to learning and learning assessment and suggests that applying Understanding by Design can lead to higher achievement on national and state tests.

Research on Instructional Practices

There are numerous teaching strategies emphasized and aligned with UbD that have been confirmed to be very effective in improving student achievement.

• Advance Organizers - short sets of verbal or visual information presented prior to learning a larger body of content.
  • Present students with context, not content, and conceptual frameworks, not specific detail.
  • Serve as bridges from previous knowledge to whatever is being learned.
  • In over 112 studies examined, Stone (1983) found that advance organizers were shown to be associated with increased learning and retention of material at all grade and ability levels, but lower-ability students tended to profit the most.

• Higher-Order Questioning - questions that require students to go beyond simple recall and engage in more sophisticated thinking.
  • Research has concluded that higher-order questioning:
    • yields positive gains on tests of factual recall and application of thinking skills;
    • facilitates better textbook learning than do fact question inserts;
    • activates prior knowledge and focuses attention, resulting in better learning.
  • Despite the advantages Gall (1984) discovered that only about 20 percent of classroom questions required more than simple factual recall; and Goodlad (1984) reported that only about one percent of classroom discussion invited students to give their own opinions and reasoning.

• Feedback - Research has confirmed that one of the most effective strategies a teacher can use is to provide students with feedback relative to how well they are doing.
  • Guidelines for classroom feedback:
    • Feedback should be “corrective” in nature. This means that it should provide students with an explanation of what they are doing that is correct and what they are doing that is not correct.
    • Feedback should be timely. Feedback provided immediately after assessment enhances learning.
    • Feedback should be specific to a criterion; that is, it should inform students where they stand relative to a specific target of knowledge or skill. Research has consistently indicated that criterion-referenced feedback has a more powerful effect on student learning than normreferenced feedback.
    • Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback by monitoring their own progress

• Related Strategies - additional strategies that possitively relate to students achievement include:
  • Identifying similarities and differences;
  • Using “nonlinguistic representations”—primarily graphic organizers, models, mental pictures, artistic expression, and kinesthetic activity;
  • Generating and testing hypotheses through systems analysis, problem solving, historical investigation, invention, and experimental inquiry; and
  • Asking students to explain their thinking

Research on Higher Education

The National Survey of Student Engagement__(NSSE)__ identified five categories of effective educational practices that are linked to desired outcomes in college

• 3 of those 5 align with the principals of UbD
  • Level of Academic Challenge- Emphasizes importance of academic effort and setting high expectations for student performance
  • Active and Collaborative Learning- Applying knowledge to new settings and collaborating for mastering difficult material or problems
  • Enriching Educational Experiences- Internships, community service, senior capstone courses
• Example-__Virginia agency used UbD to create social studies framework__

Future Research Targeted

• Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is planning to launch the first formal, independent research study on the efficacy UbD now that the materials and processes are stable
• Informal studies are being conducted at the school levels

Understanding by Design in Action

• Programs and Projects- Below are examples of some of the programs and projects that recognize the efficacy of the UbD framework and incorporate it in their work

• Schools and Districts- Below are examples of some of the schools and districts that use UbD to guide curriculum, local assessment, staff development, teacher observation, and school improvement
  • Norfolk (Virginia) School District
  • Georgetown (South Carolina) School District
  • Laredo (Texas) Independent School District
  • Nanuet (New York) School District
• Regional Collaborations- Below are examples of some of the agencies that have facilitated collaborative curriculum and staff development projects using UbD
  • __Standards in Action Project__ a collaborative project between San Diego County School Districts and the San Diego County Office of Education
  • Bucks County Intermediate Unit- Coordinates curriculum and staff development training for teachers and administrators
  • Capital Region Education Council (CREC)- Coordinates curriculum and staff development project for teachers and administrators
• Higher Education
  • The Understanding by Design book is used in more than 150 undergraduate and graduate schools
  • College of New Jersey uses UbD for mapping curriculum by department and for course and syllabus design

Additional Information

• __Video clip of Jay McTighe discussing his book "Understanding by Design"__
• More than 255,000 copies of Understanding by Design have been distributed worldwide
• Tens of thousands of teachers and administrators have received UbD training
• Both the Understanding by Design book and the Understanding by Design Handbook won the annual Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Educational Publication from EdPress

Reference:

McTighe, J., & Seif, E. (2003). A summary of underlying theory and research base for understanding by design. Unpublished manuscript.

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